


faulty wiring

by extra kanin (gracon_bacon)



Series: light a spark in my life [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Index Katsuki Yuuri, M/M, Outlet Victor Nikiforov, voltageverse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 06:32:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11961693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracon_bacon/pseuds/extra%20kanin
Summary: In a world ruled by biological compatibility - whether it be index and outlet or male and female - there was little room for mistakes. After all, humans have multiple options for reproduction: they could search for their index or outlet - their fated biological soulmates - and if they chose not to do so, they could also find a suitable partner of the opposite sex. With a biological advantage like that, who would want for more?It turns out that, even with an advantage like that, mistakes could still happen.Victor was one of them.





	faulty wiring

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my enablers. You know who you are. 
> 
> Lore guide/primer to follow soon.
> 
> Rating will change to Explicit when we reach that point in this fic.
> 
> PS "A new multi-chaptered fic? But you haven't even finished the other one!" This was made in the middle of editing _the greatest distance from the sun_ and helped me regain whatever mojo I had because...yay, that fic will finally be updated very soon.

Victor Nikiforov knew at the tender age of 16 that he was destined for greatness - but also doomed to despair.

In a world ruled by biological compatibility - whether it be index and outlet or male and female - there was little room for mistakes. After all, humans have multiple options for reproduction: they could search for their index or outlet - their fated biological soulmates - and if they chose not to do so, they could also find a suitable partner of the opposite sex. With a biological advantage like that, who would want for more?

It turns out that, even with an advantage like that, mistakes could still happen.

Victor was one of them.

At the tender age of 16, just after his first Gold in an international senior competition - when he realized the potential that existed in him - he finally felt his first _pull_.

The _pull_ was the common term for a frequency that pulls an index or an outlet to their perfect biological mate. Index-outlet pairs meant perfect, healthy progeny - no matter how sickly or unhealthy the parents were - and feeling the _pull_ meant that your mate exists and has also awoken to their true I/O nature. No matter the distance, the _pull_ always stays the same, and it is only when you meet your fated mate, when flesh touches flesh, that the combined _pull_ between mates dissipates to create a spark of light - the fated _glow_.

It was, by all means, the most romantic of stories, the chosen tale of many a poet and artist, and Victor’s greatest dream. After all, he had always been a romantic. Feeling his _pull_ was the best day of his life---

\---and also his worst.

For on that fateful day, he came up to his coach, Yakov, and wrapped the man in an excited embrace, and by the cruelty of fate, he _glowed_.

Victor was horrified.

First, because it was _Yakov_ \- his coach, his secondary father figure for the past five years. There was never a doubt in his mind that Yakov was anything but that to him, and to feel his body respond that way to Yakov was his worst nightmare.

Thankfully, Yakov shook him out of it and tried to calm him down, saying _look, Vitya, I am not glowing._ “Do not worry, I am not glowing,” over and over until it finally dawned upon Victor.

Yes - Yakov wasn’t glowing! So it can’t be Yakov - he finally let himself cry in relief - but then he realizes that _he_ is still glowing. “Why? Why am I still glowing, Yakov?”

But Yakov had no answers for him.

They went to a discrete doctor after that to find out what exactly was happening with Victor’s body. He underwent several tests and procedures to examine his body and his natural frequency. The exams were frightening, some involving electricity and implements that would fit a mad scientist’s lair more than a diagnostic center, but in the end, they served their purpose. The doctors finally found out what was wrong with him.

His frequency was still unique, yes, but it fluctuated constantly - an unnatural imbalance that refused to stabilize. As a result, his body reacted to certain frequencies that matched his at that exact touch, and though the other person - in this case, Yakov - wasn’t affected at all, Victor’s body was fooled by it. They examined if it had kickstarted his second puberty - the process at which an index or outlet activates their primary reproductive systems - but nothing had changed. Yakov was not the one.

It should have been a relief. After all, he wasn’t tied to Yakov, was he? But it was the doctor’s final verdict that sealed Victor’s fate:

“With your condition, you might never find your mate.”

“But can he still have children?” Yakov had asked the doctor. “With women?”

It was Victor himself who said, “No. I don’t want that.”

No matter how minuscule the chance, how improbable the idea, how many decades it would take for him to find his mate… He wouldn’t settle for anyone else. He had someone out there - someone who might still be waiting for him, someone who was destined for him, despite the terrible hand Victor had been given.

His mate shouldn’t suffer from Victor’s disability.

And, with fake cheer, he smiled at Yakov. “I’ll just have to be famous, nyet? Then I’ll have the chance to travel all over the world. To find my mate. You told me nothing was impossible, Yakov - not if I put my mind to it.” And that was the end of the conversation.

As the years passed, Victor’s star shone even brighter. Gold medal after Gold medal, trophy after trophy, _glow_ after _glow_ . The media ate the story up like the vultures that they were - _Victor Nikiforov Glows Again! When will he meet his Fated?_ \- and Victor never uttered a word of protest. After all, everything was intentional. Every fan whose hand he shook, every slight touch he made with his competitors, every kiss he gave to babies at the park...they were all to find his _fated_ . He had broken many a fan’s heart, but at least they would know he wasn’t their _fated_ , too. “It’s a small mercy,” he would always say, “that you can still find the one for you.”

Victor thought himself impervious to the feeling of rejection. Each unrequited _glow_ was followed with: “Don’t worry, you’ll find them someday and I will, too,” that always appeased the people his body rejected without realizing that perhaps _he_ needed comfort too. For almost a decade, he weathered every one of those failed _glows,_ thinking he could just keep a smile on his face and touch another person and finally find the one.

Then, on the eve of his 26th birthday, it all came crashing down on him.

_What if they aren’t waiting for me? What if they’ve decided to be with someone else?_

_A whole decade is already too long a wait, after all._

If all his travels for the past decade still hadn’t born fruit, if his mate was still an unknown after all the people he had touched... Where else did he need to go? Who else did he need to touch? What else did he need to do?

Despair clung to him - an aching sorrow that he hid with bright smiles and countless victories. Inside, he knew he was suffering from depression. Maybe he had been, since he found out about his disability a decade ago, but he had fooled his own mind into believing that he, _the_ Victor Nikiforov, could do the impossible: that he could comb out that one person, among the eight billion people in the world, who was meant for him.

Maybe it was arrogance. Maybe it was tenacity. Maybe it was childish hope.

Victor was losing hope.

So he poured all his being into the language he knew best: the ice. His programs for this season centered on _hope and longing_ , and he said it to everyone who would listen. “I hope this will make my mate come to me. I still haven’t found them - I don’t think I ever can, by myself.”

When he skated the Aria for the first time in public, in an ice show in St. Petersburg, it was with this unspoken wish in his heart:

_Please, I beg of you, meet me halfway._

__

But his mate never came.

And when Victor finished skating the Aria in the Grand Prix Final, he felt nothing but emptiness left in his heart.

__

 

That all changed when he met Katsuki Yuuri.

 

__

  



End file.
